The Door
"The Door"HBO Asia Season 6 schedule is the fifth episode of the sixth season of Game of Thrones. It is the fifty-fifth episode of the series overall. It will premiere on May 22, 2016. It was written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and directed by Jack Bender. Plot Summary At the Wall In the Dothraki Sea In Braavos The Waif continues to drill Arya, mocking her high-born origins. Jaqen H’ghar explains that the Faceless Men were slaves in Valyria before establishing the Free City of Braavos and the House of Black & White. Handing Arya a vial, Jaqen tells her an actress, Lady Crane, will be the next to receive the Many-Faced God’s “gift.” Arya enjoys the spectacle of the actors re-enacting the War of the Five Kings, playing Baratheons and Lannisters, but her pleasure ceases when her father, and his execution, are caricatured. Arya sneaks into the dressing room to observe her target – the actress playing Cersei – who appears to be a clever, decent woman. Arya later shares with Jaqen her plan to poison Lady Crane’s rum. Arya suspects that a jealous younger actress, Bianca, has commissioned the kill. Jaqen cuts her off, reminding her a servant does not question. In Meereen In the Iron Islands Yara Greyjoy is the first to lay claim to the Salt Throne, and Theon Greyjoy after a slight pause endorses her. Uncle Euron Greyjoy appears claiming the throne over Yara Greyjoy, deriding Yara as a woman. Yara suggests building a massive fleet to attack and make their mark on Westeros, while Euron plans on wedding Daenerys Targaryen and taking Westeros using his boats and Daenerys' army and dragons. Then Yara and Theon and many of their loyalists retreat from the islands on some of "the best ships" as Euron is being crowned. Euron calls his followers to build their own ships and murder his niece and nephew. In The North It is revealed that Leaf and the other Children of the Forest created the first White Walkers. Bran, Leaf, Hodor, and Meera are hiding with the Three-Eyed Raven. The White Walkers are able to find them after Bran is touched by The Night's King in a Warg dream. After being touched the White Walkers are able to also pass through the entrance of the root cave. After the White Walkers begin to swarm the cave they kill most of the Children of the Forest and Summer. In order for Bran to make it out, Leaf sacrifices herself to buy him some time. Bran must Warg as Hodor in order to hold the door, but he is able to do this while still being in a Warg dream. Meera repeatedly yells at Hodor to "hold the door" which Bran hears in his dream. As Hodor is holding the door in real time, Bran witnesses Hodor have a sizeure and begin screaming "hold the door", which he begins to slur and turn into "hodor". Appearances First *Izembaro *Brusco *"Joffrey Baratheon" actor *Lady Crane *"Eddard Stark" actor *Bobono *Bianca *Kinvara *Lord Rickard Stark Deaths * Three-eyed raven * Summer * White Walker * Leaf * Hodor Production Cast Starring *Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister *Emilia Clarke as Queen Daenerys Targaryen *Kit Harington as Jon Snow *Aidan Gillen as Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish *Liam Cunningham as Ser Davos Seaworth *Carice van Houten as Lady Melisandre *Sophie Turner as Princess Sansa Stark *Nathalie Emmanuel as Missandei *Maisie Williams as Arya Stark *Conleth Hill as Varys *Isaac Hempstead-Wright as Bran Stark *Kristofer Hivju as Tormund Giantsbane *Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy *Michiel Huisman as Daario Naharis *Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth *Tom Wlaschiha as Jaqen H'ghar *Iain Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont Guest Starring *Max von Sydow as the Three-eyed raven *Kristian Nairn as Hodor *Richard E. Grant as Izembaro *Essie Davis as Lady Crane *Pilou Asbæk as Euron Greyjoy *Gemma Whelan as Princess Yara Greyjoy *Ben Crompton as Eddison Tollett *Ellie Kendrick as Meera Reed *Faye Marsay as The Waif *Jacob Anderson as Grey Worm *Michael Feast as Aeron Greyjoy *Kae Alexander as Leaf *Daniel Portman as Podrick Payne *Darrell D'Silva as an Ironborn *Kevin Eldon as "Ned Stark" actor *Leigh Gill as Bobono *Eline Powell as Bianca *Rob Callender as "Joffrey Baratheon" actor *Eva Butterly *Vladimir Furdik as The Night King *Ania Bukstein as Kinvara *Gerald Lepkowski as Zanrush *Annette Tierney as young Old Nan *Sam Coleman as Wyllis (young Hodor) *Wayne Foskett as Rickard Stark *Sebastian Croft as young Eddard Stark *Matteo Elezi as young Benjen Stark *Fergus Leathem as young Rodrik Cassel *Kate Anthony *Sally Mortemore *Michael Hooley as a Night's Watch man *Ruairí Heading *Robert Render *James Lecky *Glen Barry *Brendan O'Rourke *Ross Anderson-Doherty *Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir *Ragnar Þórhallsson *Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson *Brynjar Leifsson *Kristján Páll Kristjánsson Cast notes *17 of 27 starring cast members appear in this episode. *Starring cast members Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell), Indira Varma (Ellaria Sand), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton), Jonathan Pryce (High Sparrow), Dean-Charles Chapman (Tommen Baratheon), Jerome Flynn (Bronn), and Hannah Murray (Gilly) are not credited and do not appear in this episode. Notes *The title of this episode is revealed to be a reference to the last stand at the door to the cave in the final scene. *Dorne does not appear in this episode. King's Landing and its subplots do not appear in this episode (including House Lannister and House Tyrell). Ramsay Bolton in Winterfell and the Tully/Frey subplot do not appear, though they are discussed. Samwell Tarly and Gilly on the way to Oldtown do not appear in this episode. *This is only the sixth episode in the TV series in which King's Landing is not featured in any scene. The previous four were Season 1's "The Kingsroad" (because King Robert and Cersei were with the Starks on the road and had not yet reached the city), Season 3's "The Rains of Castamere" (which focused mostly on the Red Wedding), Season 4's "The Watchers on the Wall" (which focused entirely on the Battle of Castle Black), Season 5's "Kill the Boy" (which didn't feature any scene in the Seven Kingdoms not counting the North), and "The Dance of Dragons". *This episode introduces Kinvara, a Red Priestess who seems to be a high-ranking leader, or perhaps the leader of the Lord of Light religion. If she exists in the books continuity she hasn't been introduced yet. **Practically nothing has been revealed in the five current novels about the hierarchical organization of the Lord of Light religion, or its organizational history - perhaps hinting that this will be a plot point later. What is known is that the major city-states of the Free Cities do each have their own local High Priest, but the interrelationships between the different High Priests over large areas are unknown. The High Priest in Volantis in the novels is a man named Benerro, but it is unclear how he interacts with the High Priest in Myr, etc. If there actually is some ruling body of the religion in Asshai or somewhere else, its existence hasn't even been hinted at. Even in the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014), the only vague new detail about the Lord of Light religion is that it started becoming increasingly popular about one hundred years before the beginning of the main narrative. **Note that the actress cast to play Kinvara is unusually young to play one of the high ranking leaders of an entire religion: Israeli actress Ania Bukstein (Kinvara) was in fact only 33 years old when she filmed for Season 6 - and is six years younger than Carice van Houten (Melisandre). The current novels have hinted that Melisandre is far older than she actually appears, however, and now the Season 6 premiere has confirmed that she casts a magical glamor over herself to give an appearance of youth when she is truly several centuries old. Thus Kinvara is probably using a magical glamor of youth as well - and it seems fitting that an even more powerful priestess than Melisandre would be able to sustain a magical glamor of an even more youthful appearance. *This episode marks the first name the Night's King is referred to by name. *In the books, Lady Crane is called Lady Stork. *The HBO official Viewer's Guide confirms that the play performed by the theatre troupe is "The Bloody Hand" like in the novels. However, in the novels its focus is on Tyrion Lannister more than Ned Stark.http://www.gameofthrones.com/game-of-thrones/season-6/episode-5/people/217/lady-crane *The Viewer's Guide also confirms that the Drowned Man conducting the kingsmoot is Aeron Greyjoy, a.k.a. "Damphair", brother of Balon and Euron.http://www.gameofthrones.com/game-of-thrones/season-6/episode-5/people/210/aeron-damphair *Jaqen H'ghar's story about how the Faceless Men originated is from the novels, but may include some errors. As he says, they started out as a death cult among the slaves of Old Valyria, worked to death in the vast mines to feed their masters' ever-expanding hunger for resources. Over time, they came to see death as a "gift" to release fellow slaves from their hellish suffering - and in time, honed their skills to give "the gift" to the slave-masters too. Where Jaqen's story diverges is when he says that Braavos was "founded" by the Faceless Men - in the novels it was not. For that matter, the Season 5 Blu-ray set's animated featurette on "Braavos (Histories & Lore)" already clearly explained that Braavos was founded when a slave uprising took control of a slave transport fleet, killed all the slave-masters on board, then sailed to the far northwest corner of Essos where the slavers wouldn't find them. In the novels, the Faceless Men came to Braavos at some later point - though they did help the city grow and flourish, by secretly killing its political enemies across the Free Cities. It's possible that the actor flubbed his line and meant to say "they found the Free City of Braavos", after leaving the slave-mines of Valyria, not that they "founded" it. *While he doesn't directly appear, this episode starts re-introducing Brynden "The Blackfish" Tully, not seen since the Red Wedding at the end of Season 3. In the TV version, he happened to be outside of the main hall when the betrayal began, and thus managed to fight his way out of the ambush in the camps outside. In the Season 3 finale, even Roose Bolton expressed his concern at Ser Brynden escaping their grasp. In the novels, Brynden actually never came to the Red Wedding at all - Robb left him behind at Riverrun to command the Tully armies and guard their southern flank while he tried to kick the Greyjoys out of the North. The TV series condensed this so that Robb was going to try to return south to make a strike at Casterly Rock, so Brynden just came with him - also viewers may have suspected the coming ambush if some characters weren't present. Either way the end result seemed to generally be the same - alone of Robb's lieutenants, Brynden was the only one that still remained alive and free. Afterwards the situation in the Riverlands was left unclarified in subsequent seasons. In the books, the main Frey army moved south to lay siege to Riverrun and has been encamped around it ever since. **Littlefinger states in this episode that Brynden re-gathered the Tully forces to "retake" Riverrun. It is unclear what was meant to happen off-screen in the TV version, given that in the novels Brynden was always at Riverrun and it never fell to outside attack. It's possible that it initially fell to some advanced Frey raiding forces (because the Tully garrison didn't know about the betrayal), but then Brynden regrouped the main Tully army which was still in the field, then retook it, but then the main Frey army came and surrounded them, etc. Either that or the TV writers wanted to somehow address the fact that no one mentioned in the past two seasons that Riverrun was still left unconquered. **Sansa makes no attempt to contact Brynden in the novels, though she also hasn't met Brienne of Tarth in the novels either. In the books, Brienne stayed in the Riverlands searching for the Stark girls and never went to the North (though these storyline are being adapted at an uneven pace). Thus sending Brienne back to Riverrun to try to open a line of communication with their Tully allies puts Brienne back onto her subplot from the books, and is a fairly plausible reason for her to go back south within the context of the TV show. **Most of the North's armies were destroyed in the massacre at the Red Wedding. Their Riverlord allies, however, led by the Tullys, were not present at the massacre and thus in the novels their armies were not totally destroyed - but facing the brunt of the combined Lannister/Tyrell armies, with no natural defenses between them, and now with their Northern allies massacred, most of them simply surrendered rather than face annihilation. The Tully garrison under Brynden held out in spite of them, but he only had about 200 men left under his command (more than enough to defend the castle, but not keeping on extra mouths to feed during the siege). Thus on the one hand, more of the Tully armies survived than the Stark armies (which were totally destroyed), and it is true that Sansa would try to at least contact them. On the other hand, the Tully forces are now totally surrounded by the main armies of the Lannisters, Tyrells, and Freys, and not in much of a position to help anyone. Of course, as the showrunners point out in the "Inside the Episode" featurette, the fact that Sansa didn't kill Littlefinger because she hopes to ally with his large Vale army in the future is meant to indicate that she isn't just thinking about the immediate battle in front of them, but is thinking several steps ahead to how they're going to face the Lannisters to the south, on a scale of years. **Sansa calls Brynden Tully her "uncle" - he is actually her great-uncle, as he is her mother Catelyn's uncle. This isn't incongruous, as even Joffrey would refer to his great-uncle Kevan Lannister as "uncle Kevan" in clipped fashion. **Davos says that Brynden Tully is a hero and legend. Brynden became a war hero famous across Westeros for his actions in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, the big war fought a generation before Robert's Rebellion. In that war, in which he fought alongside Barristan Selmy, Brynden acquitted himself valiantly as a warrior but even moreso as a military commander - even the young Jaime Lannister was in awe when he first met Brynden. In-universe, if anyone could regroup the scattered remnants of the Tully armies to give the Lannisters and Freys this much trouble, it would be the Blackfish. *'It is physically impossible - to the point of ''absurdity - that Littlefinger could meet with Sansa Stark in Mole's Town in this episode.' Sansa stayed with Littlefinger in the Vale in the novels, and never even met Ramsay Bolton - thus Littlefinger riding to within sight of the Wall itself to meet with her like this never happened in the books and is the result of heavy story condensations. **Critics in Season 2 introduced the popular joke that Littlefinger must have a "jetpack" to quickly meet with characters in King's Landing, Storm's End, and at Harrenhal all within a few episodes of each other. Actually, a small riding party can move much faster than a large army, these three locations are not ridiculously far apart, and at that point in the war, the Lannisters controlled all of the major highways in the region (specifically the Kingsroad), and it was still pleasant autumn weather - thus a single rider ''could plausibly have moved around between those locations with relative speed. **In this case, the distance between the Vale and the Wall is enormous - something like three times the distance between Storm's End and Harrenhal, and the highways are filling with snow now. Moreover, the Bolton forces are at Winterfell, directly in the middle of Littlefinger's overland path. Littlefinger said that the Vale's main army is camped at Moat Cailin - the choke point at the Neck where the Kingsroad crosses into the North. The other end of the Kingsroad is at Castle Black itself, and Mole's Town is just a few miles south of Castle Black along the Kingsroad. Winterfell, now the center of Ramsay Bolton's powerbase where his armies are massing is itself located near the Kingsroad, between these two points. Littlefinger wouldn't just require "a jetpack" to cross such a vast distance in a short amount of time - he'd need a teleporter to slip past the Boltons in the middle. **Consider that in the TV version, Littlefinger said the Vale should start gathering its army and heading north after his spies heard the news that Sansa Stark escaped Winterfell. Sansa escaped Winterfell in the first episode of Season 6, and reached Castle Black in the fourth episode (albeit she didn't have horses to ride until the second episode). Inherently, it would have taken at least several days even for a messenger-raven to bring the news to Littlefinger in the Vale, then he would have to ride from the Vale to Moat Cailin, from Moat Cailin to Winterfell, then from Winterfell to Mole's Town in less time than it took Sansa and her companions to ride from near Winterfell to Castle Black. It isn't clear how much time passed between when Sansa arrived at Winterfell last episode and when Littlefinger arrives near it in this episode, but it would take at least weeks - and this is purely considering the time involved, not even factoring in how Littlefinger could avoid the Bolton armies controlling he center of the North. **The other unstated option is that Littlefinger may have arrived at the Wall by ship, at the eastern end at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, then ridden west to Mole's Town - apparently not riding to Castle Black itself due to fear of being recognized or attacked by some of the other characters there (Davos wouldn't trust Littlefinger). This is somewhat more plausible, the Boltons don't have any strength at sea to stop travel by ship, but his ship might still need jets attached to travel the entire south-to-north length of "the North" to get to the Wall. Gallery The Door 01.jpg The Door 02.jpg The Door 03.jpg The Door 04.jpg The Door 05.jpg The Door 06.jpg The Door 07.jpg The Door 08.jpg The Door 09.jpg The Door 10.jpg The Door 11.jpg The Door 12.jpg The Door 13.jpg The Door 14.jpg The Door 15.jpg The Door 16.jpg The Door 17.jpg The Door 18.jpg Childrenoftheforest.jpg References Category:Season 6 Episodes Category:Season 6